Over the past few years, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
hasn't been known for promoting racial harmony. Chairman Mary
Frances Berry is a stalwart liberal who rules the Commission with
an iron fist. Critics accuse her of using the government agency
to promote her own political agenda. Commission reports critical
of both the 2000 presidential election results and New York City
Mayor Rudy Giuliani's policing policy just as he began his run
for the Senate, plus Berry's current refusal to seat a Bush-appointed
commissioner, have tarnished the Commission's reputation.

On January 11, Berry and her fellow commissioners have an opportunity
to fix this negative perception. When the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights meets in Washington to discuss the Environmental Protection
Agency's (EPA) "environmental justice" policy, it will
have the ability to point out how environmental justice policies
must be reformed if poor and minority citizens are to be fully
protected from undue economic and environmental hardships. Not
only would this promote civil rights, but it would also address
a problem that conservatives and minority leaders have been complaining
about for years.

In 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which
instructs federal agencies to identify and address "disproportionately
high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its
programs, policies and activities on minority populations and
low-income Americans."1 The
implication has been that businesses impose themselves on relatively
powerless communities, and that the government must step in to
protect those communities. Environmental justice policy in practice
- particularly at the EPA - has proven to be, in the words of
former Detroit mayor Dennis Archer, "so vague and so broad
that it nullifies everything that we have done to attract companies"
to minority communities.2

The order does not bar the government from also assessing the
economic impacts of government policies and regulations on minorities
and the poor, but the government so far has failed to do so. Expanding
the scope of the government's environmental justice investigations
is something that should naturally be championed by the Commission.

Current environmental justice policy can be detrimental to
the communities it is meant to protect. In Romeville, Louisiana,
the EPA essentially denied residents - 40% of whom live below
poverty level - hundreds of temporary construction jobs and 165
permanent jobs simply because the residents are black. Saying
the Shintech Corporation's proposed chemical plant was determined
to cause a "disparate impact" on the minority community,
the EPA denied Shintech a permit to build over the objections
of the local NAACP and other community groups. Shintech built
the plant, but in a white community.3
Select Steel, Inc. decided against locating a steel mill that
would create 200 jobs in economically distressed Genesee County,
Michigan after a small group of local activists filed a challenge
with the EPA on environmental justice grounds. Questioning the
activists' motivations, Congressman James Barcia (D-MI) said,
"I can't understand it. They just don't want economic development
in Michigan."4

Even self-described environmental justice advocates decry the
failure of the government's policy. A survey of 69 environmental
justice groups conducted by The National Center for Public Policy
Research in 2000 found that 72% did not believe low-income communities
should be deprived of jobs and other economic opportunities by
environmental laws and regulations. In addition, 74% believed
the government should be required to determine whether or not
proposed environmental laws would unfairly hurt minorities. And
47% thought that regulatory agencies are unsympathetic to the
concerns of the poor and minorities.5

Clearly, commissioners have a real problem before them. The
question is whether Berry and her supporters will address this
serious concern or simply rubber-stamp current government policies
and single out businesses as the sole perpetrator of environmental
and economic injustice.

Walter Williams, chairman of the George Mason University economics
department, notes, "As you look around the world, it is poverty,
as opposed to dirty air, that has implications for health."6 It's time for a clear and reasoned examination
of government policies that deny prosperity. That's the challenge
the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights must accept.

Footnotes:

1 "Federal Actions To Address Environmental
Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,"
Federal Register, Vol. 59, No. 32, Wednesday, February 16, 1994,
downloaded from http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/executive orders/pdf/eo12898.pdf
on December 21, 2001.
2 John Carlisle, "Needed: Environmental Justice for Minorities,"
National Policy Analysis #288, The National
Center for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., May, 2000.
3 "EPA Robs Poor African-American Community of Well-Paying
Jobs," National Directory
of Environmental and Regulatory Victims, The National Center
for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., 2000.
4 Michael Centrone, "The Time is Now for a New Environmental
Justice Policy," National
Policy Analysis #296, The National
Center for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., June, 2000.
5 John Carlisle, "Economic Opportunity and Social Issues
Trump Environment as Top Concern for Poor and Minorities,"
National Policy Analysis #310, The National
Center for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., September
2000.
6 "Government's Power Over the Environment Threatens Our
Liberty," interview with Tom Randall, Environment and Climate
News, February 2000, p. 20.

# # #

David W. Almasi is the executive director of The National Center
for Public Policy Research, a non-partisan Washington, D.C. think
tank. He can be reached at [email protected].